


Ask for Anything

by dancinbutterfly



Category: The Long Walk
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:24:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As far as Cathy Scramm knows, the only thing Raymond Garratty has asked for so far for his Prize is to talk her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ask for Anything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kassidy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kassidy/gifts).



> Character deaths took place in the source materials - prior to this fanwork.

Two squad members arrive at her parents' house a little before lunch time on a bright sunny morning in early May. The first thing Cathy Scramm thinks "This is it. They're bringing me his body, finally." She doesn’t know why they've made her wait.

She doesn't care. She just wants to take care of her husband. He always slept like a log, curled on his side around her. It could get cold at night in Phoenix – dry cold but cold nonetheless and he always kept her warm. She thinks that he deserves to lie down after everything. He must have walked so far and she wants to make sure that now he's resting in peace but the squads still haven’t given him back.

Only they don’t have his body. They don’t ask to come in. "Come with us, please, Mrs. Scramm," says the taller of the two soldiers. Cathy chokes on panic. She hasn't done anything. She hasn’t said anything. She supports her government. She lost her man in the Long Walk and she managed to keep her mouth shut about even that. There's no reason for this.

Her mother stands by the door. Cathy can see her knuckles going white as she clenches her hands into fists at her side. "I'm pregnant," Cathy says like that will make any difference if they take her away.

Maybe it will.

She's heard stories where they'll wait, take the children of subversives to the state orphanages, raises them as elites for the squads. That would be better. She wants a piece of herself and her husband to go on even if she doesn't.

"Yes, ma'am, we know," the second, shorter soldier says. "Please go pack a bag and come with us."

That’s when Cathy starts breathing again. No one gets to pack when they get squaded. They just disappear.

She doesn’t have much. She takes two dresses, both of the new maternity underwear sets - elastic underwear and bras with so much metal in it they could build bridges with it. that a neighbor Mrs. Aaronson down the street had brought her when the Walk ended, and that boy Garratty had won. When Mrs. Aaronson gave them to Cathy she seemed like she wanted to make a joke about Cathy needing all the "support" she could get – she was that type of woman – but mercifully she had said nothing, just handed it over with a sad look. Cathy had taken them because seven hundred dollars wasn’t going to take her very far now. She takes her wedding picture too. She doesn't know why, but she does and follows the two soldiers out to their jeep.

From there it’s a half hour silent drive to a mostly empty airfield. A small, fat transport plane painted an ugly green sits on the runway waiting for her. She's never flown before. She wishes she could be excited about it, instead of bone weary and quietly terrified.

The flight on the military transport takes longer, six hours where Cathy stares at her wedding picture and traces her husband's features with her fingertip over and over. He'd never been the smartest or most handsome man in the world but had been good. Honest and kind and he had loved her. That much she had in life to be sure of which was more than most people got, she figured.

She eats one of the prepackaged army meals looking out the window thinking about how impressed he would have been by all this. He'd wanted things to be better for her, wanted her and the baby to be happy. She doesn't think this is happiness but at least she can still feel at all. She hadn't thought she would when he left.

When they land in Boston, it's dark. She has a hard time seeing as her two soldiers walk her to another jeep. The drive from the airfield to, surprisingly, a military hospital is another two hours.

They put her in an empty room with a TV bolted to the wall and one of those beds that move up and down electronically. "He's not awake," a nurse in a military uniform of her own says, giving her a gentle smile. She has a tray of hospital food and sets it down on the table beside the bed.

"He?" Cathy asks. She has no idea what she is doing here or who "he" is.

"Raymond Garratty," the nurse says in hushed tones. "He's in recovery here. He asked to see you." She holds up her hands as if to say _so here you are_ which Cathy figures is about right. That is the Prize after all – anything you want for the rest of your life. She doesn’t know what must have happened that Raymond Garratty would want with her though. She's a little afraid to find out.

She sleeps once she's eaten. She's tired all the time now that she's started to show. It's the baby. He kicks like an ox, strong like his daddy. Cathy curls up on the narrow hospital bed and pretends her husband is behind her. He used to press his nose to the back of her neck and breathe deep. She's tired enough as she drifts, she can almost feel the heat of his breathing against her nape.

She wakes up to the squad nurse shaking her shoulder. "He's asking for you."

Raymond Garratty looks like a concentration camp victim only a few days after liberation. He's in a hospital gown, his skin pale against the pillow and loose against his skin where weight used to be. In the week since the Walk ended, he clearly hadn't recovered much strength. She'd heard the story – how at the end he'd run until he was sedated, how he had woken up crying, how he hadn't yet asked for The Prize.

He's a news story every night. Long Walkers don’t usually make it as long or as strong as he did. He doesn’t look strong lying in front of her with IVs going into his left arm and the small oxygen tube going into his nose.

"Mr. Garratty?" It felt odd calling him that. He was younger than she was by two years. That he is alive is the reason she was a widow. But he had survived and he wanted her here. So here she stood. Part of the Prize. "I'm Cathy Scramm. They told me you wanted to see me."

"Scramm was right," Garratty says finally. His voice sounds like that of an old mad, worn out and rough. "You are a peach."

Pain cuts through Cathy like a knife. He's never going to call her that again. Not ever. She gasps against the thought and bends over, curled around her stomach for a moment. It hurts. It's new and it's real and it hurts.

"Sorry," he croaks out. "Sorry, sorry I didn’t- I wasn't- We promised him. All of us left, when he –" Garratty stops and closes his eyes. He's crying. "We promised."

Now that she's closer, she can see that he's been crying a lot, tear tracks almost carved into his face. The lost expression on his face makes him look like a little boy and his hopelessness makes him seem a thousand years old.

Cathy reaches out and takes his hand without thinking. His skin is roughened – no doubt a week exposed to the elements, punishing himself. It's real like the rest of him doesn't seem to be.

He clings to her, clenching her fingers so tight they hurt. He looks at her with huge, wet eyes and Cathy thinks she sees her own pain reflected back at her a thousand times. Or ninety-nine times at least.

"It's all right," she murmurs, the way she'd talk to a wounded dog.

"It's not. It's not all right. You're pregnant, Jesus God."

"I am," Cathy agrees with a tired sigh. "Would you mind if I sit down? Swollen ankles," she says, waving at her feet then stops, horrified. She can't see Garratty's feet under the blankets but they're bigger than they should be. Wrapped in swathes of gauze no doubt, like misshaped white boots. "I'm sorry. Oh, gosh, I didn’t mean- I'm so sorry."

"Yeah its okay," Garratty croaks. He glances at the edge of the bed. "Sit. Sitting's good."

She does, as carefully as she can, keeping hold of his hand. She looks at his face but he won't meet her eyes. That's shame. She recognizes it all at once. She remembers feeling it the first time she went to one of the night classes that got her that diploma that was so damn important to her husband, admitting she couldn't graduate the normal way. Compared to the shame in Garratty's eyes though, the distant ache was nothing.

"I don't blame you," she says, in case he doesn’t know. She might have, back in Phoenix, because he was alive. Because it was easy.

She doesn't anymore. She can't, looking at him now. There are streaks of grey in his hair, wrinkles around his eyes no sixteen year old boy should have. She wants to ease the pain the hold. "For my husband. I promise I don’t. So just, tell me what I can do for you."

Just tell me so I can go home, she thinks. She doesn't like hospitals, especially not this one. The air is cold and she prefers the Arizona heat. She prefers her parents piteous looks to the dead horror that line Garratty's face.

"It's not about what I want. It's about you."

"Me."

"Yeah. We promised we'd take care of you so, what do you want?"

"I want my husband back." Cathy says before she can stop herself. It's not fair. It's a cruel thing to say. He's been through hell and deserves better from her, from everyone. "Sorry. I keep doing that."

"What?"

"Saying things like that."

"Like what? What you think?" He gives her a thin smile. "It's good. No one else will. Everyone keeps telling me how proud they are. Maine's own. Representing the strength of the country. They don't actually want to hear what I have to say." He swallows. "Can't blame them though. I don't want to hear what I have to say."

"I do," Cathy replies, surprised to realize that it's true. She wants to hear about it. She wants to have something to tell her child about what happened to the father they'll never meet. More than that, she wants to know what it must have taken for Garratty to survive where he hadn't. She squeezes his hand again, covering it with her other one. "Tell me. It's all right."

He looks at her with frightened eyes. She nods and then he begins to speak. He talks to her about the pain, the cold, the heat. He talks about the way you could get lost inside yourself and about someone named Pete McVries, a boy he met on the walk.

He stops every now and then for water. Cathy holds the cup to his lips because the act of speaking so much takes too much of a toll on his worn out body for him to manage it. She strokes his hair back off his forehead and sets it back on the bedside table so he can continue. He looks better as he talks. He needs to bear witness, she thinks, needs to be heard.

The nurse, the one Cathy is already starting to think of as her nurse, is the only person they see for hours. She checks in every 45 minutes or so, brings them more water when Garratty runs out. He falls silent when she enters and exits the room. He only answers in short sentences when a squad doctor comes in to check on his vitals and change the dressings on his feet a few hours in.

Cathy has to get up and walk out of the room for that. She tries to stay. Really she does but she is not that good of a person and she certainly doesn't have that strong a stomach – not since she got pregnant at least. The hint of purple mottled flesh she did see reminded her enough of rotting meat that she had felt a little dizzy.

She leans against the wall in the hall outside Garratty's room as soon as she gets out the door. She can't help herself from taking deep breaths, trying to catch get the spinning to stop.

"Most of them come through my service," says the nurse. Cathy is startled because she didn’t hear her walk up on her. Must be those comfortable white tennis shoes all nurses seem to wear, even the ones whose uniform is the picture of squad regulations in every other aspect. "My unit is always assigned to the end."

"What?"

"The winners." The nurse says. "I've been working this unit for nine years. Garratty is the ninth Walker I've seen like this."

"Is it always this bad?"

The nurse sighs and shakes her head. "No. It's almost always worse. Chances are he'll live. He'll probably even get to keep his feet. He won't let his family near him though so maybe it won't matter."

The nurse shrugs a little, as if a half dead boy with a broken spirit and feet so abused they were basically stumps was nothing. Then she pushes off the wall. Her sneakers squeak as she walks down the hall towards another doctor with a white coat over his uniform.

Cathy breathes out as she slips back inside. She doesn’t like the nurse. Her eyes were cold as she talked about his feet and it makes her sick again, dizzy and hot on her neck and down her chest in a nauseating burn. These people don’t deserve to talk to Garratty. He's too good for them. He's survived too much for the look in their eyes.

He's in tears when she comes back in. In tears and staring off to the left and out the window. They've medicated him. She recognizes that look from when her grandmother was dying, morphine drowned and barely there.

"Raymond," she cover his hand in hers and sits down on the edge of his bed. She thumbs away one of the tear tracks because her maternal instincts have already started to form. He leans into the touch. It gives her hope that maybe she won't screw up her baby too badly, raising him on her own. "Raymond tell me what you want. It's okay. You can tell me. I understand."

He looks up at her with glazed eyes. She sees pure loss in them and gasps because she does. She understands that too well.

"I want…Pete… he- He'd-" He stops and shakes his head. "He'd laugh at me."

"I won't laugh at you."

"Know," he sighs, already sounding a bit sleepy. "I know. But Pete would. I want Pete to laugh at me. I want him to- I want-" His voice breaks, shatters even and he's crying again. He realizes he's doing it this time though, cries into his hands like she's sure he wouldn't dare if he weren’t drugged.

She knows the pitch of his sobs though. He wants Peter McVries back. She doesn’t need to be any kind of genius to recognize that kind of grief. She's got enough of her own to spare.

She sighs and pulls Garratty to her by the shoulder. He buries his wet face in her neck and clings. The pads of his fingers dig hard into her shoulder blades. They'll bruise but she doesn't say anything. She rocks him back and forth, stroking his hair and murmuring lies about how everything would be all right.

"I want them to stop," he whispers. His lips brush her skin with every word. "I want them to stop the Long Walk. I want it to never fucking happen again."

Cathy stiffens at that. That's practically treason. If it were anyone else, it would be a squading offence. But he won the Prize. He can do whatever he likes.

"Did you ask?"

He nods against her neck. The hiccupping noise he makes a moment later answers the next question she was going to ask – she doesn’t need her to tell him what they said now.

She can't imagine the State saying anything but no. It's too big, too much a part of the culture. She doesn't know why or where it came from but it's the national pastime. It's practically sacred. One giant human sacrifice of ninety-nine young men to the hungry masses. People don't like to lose their rituals.

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." Garratty says. He sags against her and twists his head so that it rests on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry. Let me take care of you and your baby, okay? It's the only thing- I can't do anything else."

She nods even though he can't see her. "Okay. Okay, you can."

He makes a grateful little noise and sags even more heavily against her. She lets him stay there, stroking his prematurely gray-streaked hair until his breathing levels out. She stays there like that with him in a drugged sleep on her shoulder until the doctor comes back to check on him. And even when the doctor eases Garratty back onto the bed, she stays.

Cathy has nowhere to go but even if she did, she would stay until he woke up. There's a chair for her to sit in and it's not such a long wait. She has nothing but time anymore. She might as well pass it with Garratty, who looks at her with haunted eyes and understands.


End file.
